Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 42

Full Score

Audio rendering

Video

This sonata was composed in 2024. It is axiomatically invalid because I cannot play it. Many, many composers have written for instruments that they did not play and where the results were good, the proper note is astonished admiration. We think all the more of Brahms, for example, because he wrote such fine and apt music for the 'cello, or the clarinet, or whatever. But the piano is unique in that no one is allowed to write for it who has not first mastered its technique. If and where they do, the results are declared not merely unsatisfactory but ridiculous and shameful. There is such a thing as pianistic music and its rules are as tight and arbitrary as those of, say, the barbershop quartet, where a single wrong note is absoultely discreditive. If I say that this work embodies my, individual, understanding of the piano, and of its capabilities and rationales, as they intersect with my current creative concerns, the roar comes back, "Oh no, you di'n't!" From the standpoint of how keyboardists are taught and what they expect, this piece is full of wrong notes; much of the finale is simply unplayable, and one spot in the slow movement is hilarously cringe.

And you know what? I don't care. There is a whole subgenre of music for player piano that could not be played by humans; if you find it necessary to define this sonata into that category, go right ahead. Or, and, just listen.